Will Albertans punish Danielle Smith for agreeing $130 carbon tax?

Ottawa is close to a carbon pricing compromise with Alberta that will keep the industrial carbon tax in place, and change nothing that actually matters to the oil companies deciding whether to invest in Canada or go to Mexico instead. Meanwhile, Brookfield is building eight nuclear reactors in the United States.

In this segment from The Really Big Show, Jim and Iain cover the emerging Alberta-Ottawa carbon pricing compromise. The industrial carbon tax will stay. The numbers will be kicked down the road. The tanker ban will stay. The regulatory burden will stay. And the oil companies that have been waiting for a real signal will continue to take their capital to Mexico and the United States, where TC Energy is already building and Brookfield is committing to eight nuclear reactors. Jim and Iain note that a compromise that looked like a victory three years ago looks like a capitulation in 2026, because the distribution of power has shifted dramatically. The world is screaming for Canadian energy. The oil companies have grown a spine. The IEA is publicly shaming Canada. In that context, accepting a softened version of the conditions that drove a trillion dollars of investment out of the country is not a win. It is giving away a hand that was finally getting strong.

They also play a clip from Franco Terrazanno, federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Association, making the point that no serious observer can miss: a Canadian industrial carbon tax will not reduce emissions in China, India, Russia, or the United States. Approximately 70% of countries impose no national carbon tax according to the World Bank. The United States, regardless of whether the president is Republican or Democrat, does not impose a carbon tax. Getting rid of the consumer carbon tax was half the job. The industrial carbon tax is the other half and the Liberals are dying on that hill.

Then there is Catherine McKenna posting on X about facts, noting that the oil sands are among the world's most expensive and carbon-intensive barrels and that money is moving to clean energy. Jim and Iain note that the oil sands represent approximately 0.1% of global emissions, one tenth of one percent, and that McKenna has said loudly and often enough that people start to believe things whether they are true or not. She said that herself on camera in a bar. The clip exists.

They also cover the ESG apparatus that made all of this possible. BlackRock, Larry Fink, Mark Carney, and the financial wizards who constructed a shadow superstructure behind the global financial system to impose an ideological vision by cutting off capital to oil and gas. The investment charts showing renewables outperforming fossil fuels in recent years do not reflect market preference. They reflect the fact that it was impossible to get capital for anything else because the people who control the capital said no. Strip out government subsidies and the picture collapses. Trump removed the incentives in the US and the Chinese green energy companies that had flooded in are packing up and going home.

And then there is the ambassador in the $8.8 million Central Park penthouse with the $4,700 coffee machine. The government's response to this story being shared widely was that sharing it damages social cohesion. Mark Miller wants to suppress information that makes the Liberals look bad in the name of maintaining trust in institutions. Jim and Iain note the logic: trust in institutions is important, therefore we cannot tell people what the institutions are doing. That is the logic.

If the carbon pricing compromise keeps the conditions that drove a trillion dollars out of Canada, what exactly has changed?

Let us know what you think in the comments.

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